This is from US News & World Report, 11 March 2002, page 55. For
obvious reasons it reminds me of some of the discussions on this email
list:
{quote} The ideal of the intellectual was associated with a commitment to
universal truths rising above economic, ethnic, or political interests.
But from the beginning, intellectuals found it hard to live up to the
ideal. . . . "As Continental Europe gave birth to two great
tyrannical systems in the 20th century, communism and fascism,"
writes Mark Lilla in The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics,
"it also gave birth to a new social type, for which we need a new
name: the philo-tyrannical intellectual." To explain the
intellectuals' attraction to tyranny, scholars have blamed both the
excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment and the romantic,
folk-nationalism of the counter-Enlightenment. Lilla points to the
philosopher's passion for truth as the deeper cause. In its political
expression, this passion, if not controlled, can create both actual
tyrants and others who, Lilla writes, "enter life not as rulers, but
as teachers, orators, poets--what today we would call
intellectuals." Far from being independent minds, they are, he adds,
"a herd driven by their inner demons and thirsty for the approval of
a fickle public." {end quote}
The only comment I would add is such intellectuals also seem to have a
high level of disdain for the "fickle public."
Jim Elwell
